Dutch regulator leaks list of short equity positions since 2013

First Published 27th January 2017

The Dutch market regulator, AFM, accidentally published a list of
short equity positions on its website on Tuesday.

Since the 2012 EU Regulation on Short Selling, all short
positions of over 0.2% of issued share capital are required to be
disclosed to national regulators. However, only those above 0.5%
are made public.

The leak meant that positions between 0.2% and 0.5%, which are
considered "private" and are only for the eyes of the regulators,
were instead made public. The list contains data from 2013,
although it is not clear whether this is the full data or a
subset of it.

While this is an isolated incident and the absence of context,
such as offsetting long positions, limits the amount that can be
deduced from the data, it is a clear sign of the security risk
that comes with the stricter disclosure requirements introduced
in recent years.